Stardust
by The Brat Prince
Summary: James bit his lip and looked up at the sky, the moon, the stars. "One day we'll be stardust again." James/Kendall, District 4 Hunger Games AU.
1. Stardust

**Stardust**

A/N: I know I uploaded this previously, on Here, Beneath Our Lungs. What happened is, this turned into a series, and it got...uh, well, too long to put in a kames oneshot collection any longer. Now it's getting it's own little series. Anyway, what happened here is that breila_rose on LJ took issue with my dreamcasting James and Kendall as Cinna and Finnick (see Atlas Hands and Make It Gold for those specific stories, as well as the roleplaying oneshot that is chapter 16 of Here, Beneath Our Lungs). She demanded Annie/Finnick fic, and who I am I to deny her? This first chapter is a drabble, and they WILL get progressively longer as they go- first cycling back to James and Kendall as kids, and then aging back up to the arena.

* * *

When they call James's name at the Reaping, Kendall's first thought is: _this is a joke_. Because Kendall already lived through hell. How can they condemn him to another bout of the same? _Worse_, by proxy, because it is _James_?

James, who is his light.

James, who keeps him going through the night terrors and the cold, numb days.

Beautiful, insufferable James, the love of Kendall's goddamned life.

It isn't fair. James is eighteen. It's his last year. And yet, he's drawn the short straw. Kendall is no longer even eligible to take his place. So.

A joke.

It must be.

Except that the Capitol does not have a sense of humor.

Kendall finds comfort in the idea that James is a career, like him. He'll be fine. That's what Kendall tells himself. Over and over and over again. James will be _fine_.

He trains him. He gets him all the best sponsors. Kendall makes sure that James will want for nothing. But James is not fine. He is not cut out for blood or gore or death rattles. Despite all his time lifeguarding their white sand beaches back home, he can't handle it when someone's pulse dwindles to nothing beneath his fingertips.

And then James's District partner, Camille, loses her head, courtesy of a sweet faced blonde from District One, and James loses it completely.

Watching the final hours of the Games, Kendall thinks of home. He clutches his fingers into the smooth, suede surface of his viewing couch and thinks of nights where he and James would stare at the sky, watching comets slice through the black like dolphins through waves.

James would dig his hands into the sand, sifting grains through his fingers. "You know what this is?"

"Quartz, garnet, chert-" Kendall began ticking off his fingers, reciting back what he'd learned in school.

James threw a handful into his face, most of it catching in the sea breeze. "No, idiot." In a reverent voice, he said, "It's stardust."

Kendall laughed.

And laughed.

And laughed. "Stardust?"

Looking back on it, he wasn't very nice. James was right to tackle him, to tickle him, to make him beg for mercy.

Kendall still couldn't help laughing, even after he admitted surrender. "_Stardust_. What idiot told you that?"

James punched his arm, but it didn't hurt. He was lying sprawled across Kendall's body, too lazy to move far. "We learned it in school, moron."

"When?"

"When they talked about how the world was made. From stardust."

Kendall did not remember that lesson, but he may have been sleeping. Or James just might have heard wrong. That happened a lot. "So it's not just the sand then."

"Nope," James smiled, one of those huge beaming grins that stretched across his face and lit him up brighter than the lighthouse looming in the distance. Maybe he was kidding or maybe he wasn't. Did it really matter? Kendall hugged him tight, happy.

He loved James more than he'd ever known he could.

"Right. So you? You're stardust?"

James nodded eagerly. "You too."

"Great." Kendall nuzzled into his neck, kissed the shell of his ear. "I feel so enlightened."

"You should." James bit his lip and looked up at the sky, the moon, the stars. "One day we'll be stardust again."

Those words had weight that Kendall never let himself consider until now. In the present, Kendall whispers, "But not today, James."

The arena begins to fill with water. A monsoon. A flood. A blessing.

Like a mantra, Kendall repeats, "Not today."


	2. I Loved You Then

**Stardust_  
_**

_II: I Loved You Then (And I Loved You Now)_

* * *

There is a small, pale girl staring at the rickety wooden dock like it might jump up and bite her with splintered teeth. Her friend, a tall boy with bronze skin and eyes that reflect gold tells her, "It's okay."

Kendall rolls his eyes, trying to focus on the Carrick Bend he's attempting to learn. It's too complicated. His fingers won't work right, the line keeps getting tangled, and he keeps having to start all over again. At this rate, he'll never have it down in time. He was hoping to go on deck tomorrow.

Looks like he'll be stuck in the galley with his dad and the new guppy class.

Again.

The girl in front of him dips her toe in the water, testing. Wind stirs the chop like soup. It licks at her foot, and she jumps. Kendall sighs. "Look, kid. You'll be fine."

"Don't call her kid," the boy snarls. "We're the same age as you."

Kendall reassesses the situation. "Are we?"

"We're in the same year at school!"

Kendall doesn't pay much attention at school. Like, ever. But it doesn't make sense. Maybe he would have overlooked the scrawny, frightened girl, but he definitely would have noticed this boy. Wouldn't he? "Right. So how come I've been able to backstroke for a year and you're both guppies?" He gestures towards the group of kids standing on the shore, squealing every time a wave crashes towards them. The first free swim always riles up the littles, even with neon floaties attached to their arms.

The boy falters, picking at his own inflatable wings. His ribs stick out at odd angles, too visible beneath the sheath of his skin. Kendall wonders if he hasn't eaten, recently. His fingers fret with his line. "I had to help my mom at the shipyard."

Kendall blinks. "You were scared."

"I was not."

"Were too," he insists, because no mother in her right mind holds off on introducing her kid to the sea. Not unless she's one hundred percent sure the kid in question isn't going to try to make their own introductions. Too many children in Four go that way, sucked into a riptide without knowing how to fight it.

That's what Kendall's mom says, anyway. She would know; she's been captain of her own trawler since, like, before Panem became a country.

"James wasn't scared!" The girl protests, her voice stronger than Kendall expected. She tosses her hair, haughty, and says, "He wanted to take the course with me."

"So..._you_ were scared?"

The girl bristles. "So what? If human beings were meant to swim, we'd be born with gills."

Kendall scratches behind his own ear, checking. Gills would be awesome.

Honestly, he doesn't remember not being able to swim. Parents aren't supposed to teach their kids how before their fifth birthday, but like most fishmongers' spawn, he learned for real when he was three. His guppy classes last year were just a formality. District mandate.

Except for one thing.

Kendall may be one with the waves when he's swimming in 'em, but it took him a lot longer to adjust to life on top of them. Rooks alternate; one day in the sea, one day out in the sun. Kendall thrived at the former, but his first few months on a rundown sixty five footer weren't exactly stellar. His face turned shades of green he hadn't known were possible, his stomach lived in his throat, and all the while his insurmountable pride twinged. The son of a guppy instructor isn't supposed to get seasick. It took Kendall ages to live down the mockery he got from that one, in school and over the dinner table, from his own parents.

He decides some secrets are best kept.

"Don't be nervous. The water's great."

The girl bites her lip. James- Kendall likes that name- wraps his arm around her thin shoulders. Kendall thinks it must be nice, having a friend. She says, "The water swallows people. We lost my grandpa out there. Last year."

Oh. That Kendall can understand. The devil lives in the deep blue sea. His mom says that too.

On the beach, the guppies are running into the shallow waves, giggling as they lap at their legs. One instructor lords over them with stern eyes. Kendall's dad wrangles a few in his arms, swinging them up into the air before attempting to demonstrate a doggie paddle.

James says, "Why don't you just leave us alone? She's allowed to be scared."

He crosses his floatie-clothed arms and glares at Kendall in challenge. Kendall stands, shoving his disaster of a Carrick Bend into the pocket of his threadbare trunks. "Sure, okay. But I could teach you not to be. Scared, I mean."

"Why would you want to?" James asks, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

Kendall shrugs. "The water's home. No one should be afraid of it."

It's true; the sea is all he's ever known.

"We don't need your help," James grits out.

The girl hesitates. "I'm Camille."

"Kendall," Kendall says, holding out a hand to shake. Camille's fingers flop into his like a fish on dry land, unsure what to do. Kendall snorts. "We'll work on that too."

He takes them both to his favorite tide pool, half a mile down the beach. James drags his feet, but Camille follows closely. The sun is baked into the sand, warm between their toes. These are Kendall's favorite kind of afternoons, when there isn't any school and all his work is done for the day. At the pool, he splashes right in, salty cool enveloping his ankles. Foam settles across the surface of the calm, fluffy white and yellow with the age of hours.

James and Camille stand safe on the sand, staring.

"Come on," Kendall calls.

Camille shakes her head. James stays adamantly by her side.

"It doesn't get any deeper," Kendall promises. Neither of them budge.

Kendall figures out quick that he will have to coax them into the shallows. A flash of color catches his eyes, neon pink against the grainy sand. Kendall grins and carefully scoops it up. He offers it to James in the palm of his hand, like a rose.

"What's that?" James asks suspiciously.

"An urchin."

Camille takes a step forward, on the edge of the still water. "It's so bright. Can I touch it?"

"Sure," Kendall says. He does not move.

Reluctantly, the duo approaches, glued at the hip. James wasn't kidding about working in the shipyard. Motor oil slithers from the skin of his ankles in a rainbow black slick. Kendall is still pleased. He shows them both how to stroke over the spines of the urchin without getting pricked. When that loses its appeal, he heads further out into the pool, beckoning Camille forward with sand dollars and sea stars. He recaptures James's attention with a stray ray, all rubbery smooth skin. Kendall uses the empty shell of a horse shoe crab, stained blue with blood, to pull his new friends close to the mountain of rocks that shelter their tiny slice of sea life from the ocean that would wash it all away.

"A gull got at it," Kendall explains while James turns the husk this way and that.

Camille is almost eager when she asks, "What else is there?"

"I can show you." Kendall grins. He clambers up onto the rocks and over, crashing straight into the water on the other side, diving beneath the surface with ease. Fractured sunlight color blocks his skin, from peach to pale gold to somewhere in between. He bobs back up to algae slick rocks and tells James and Camille to _jump in_, happy as a sea lion.

"I can't," Camille replies, watching him, aghast. The surf isn't nearly as rough on this end of the beach as it is down near the docks, but the waves batter against the sharp jut of stone, sending spray everywhere. It clings to Kendall's eyelashes and his cheeks and the plush of his lips.

"The wings'll keep you floating. And I'll keep you safe."

Resolute, James squeezes Camille's hand and adds, "I will too."

Before Kendall can object, he cannonballs right on top of him. They tumble under the waves, limbs tangled like seaweed before James's water wings buoy them to the surface. Kendall wheezes salt water, surprised by James's reckless idiocy.

James lies back, floating easily, grinning. "What? I never said I was scared. Camille, c'mon! This is fun."

"Please," Kendall urges. He has no urchins to offer this time, so instead he gives up a gap toothed smile. James echoes it, as radiant as the sun playing off the ocean. Beneath the water, his hand brushes against Kendall's arm, and he squeezes. It feels like a _thank you_.

Camille's jaw goes tight, her little chest puffing out.

"If I drown, I'm going to be so mad at you guys," she says. She takes a deep breath.

She jumps.


	3. The Taste That Your Lips Allow

**Stardust  
**

_III: The Taste That Your Lips Allow**  
**_

* * *

The wind whips James's hair back and forth like a pennant. Steel rivets lump under his palms. The blowtorch in his lap is still warm to the touch. The crow's nest sways. From this height, James can see everything in Four, from the thin strip of white sand that curves into the horizon to the tin roofs in town, spotted with age. The salt air eats through everything. It runs through his veins and settles, abrasive against his bones.

He aches to swim, but he's still got hours of work left if they're to finish this order. The unforgiving sun beats down against his shoulders. James makes to stand. A flash of gold catches his eye amidst the piles of scrap, where everything is silver; iron and steel and tin. _Sweet_. James has never been so excited for company.

"Kendall," he shouts down to the shipyard, trying to catch his best friend's attention. Kendall's eyes raise up, up, up, and he grins.

"What are you doing up there?"

"Welding."

"That sounds boring."

James shrugs. He's not a big fan of hard labor in general. "Are you going to come up?"

"I'd rather you came down."

"Don't be a chicken."

Kendall glances sharply to the left and then to the right, checking to see if anyone has heard this challenge to his manhood, but it's just them, the scrapheap, and the half-finished hull of the boat James is perched on. He obediently scampers up the rope ladder dangling in the breeze, but pauses at the base of the crow's nest. "Are you sure you don't want to come down?"

James beams. "I like it up here."

Kendall grudgingly scales up to James, wincing when the nest sways. It can barely hold the weight of two twelve year old boys. "This is dangerous."

"So are lots of things," James replies. "Aren't you supposed to be working?"

Kendall makes a face. "Katie's sick. I'm supposed to stay home and watch her until mom got back. We're going to end up eating butterfish for dinner again."

"Could be worse," James comments, because he has known hunger his whole life. Kendall's never really understood how lucky he is to be the son of fishermen. It's been hard for him since his dad died, but his mom still smuggles home part of her day's catch every evening, and Kendall's got an apprenticeship of his own to steal from. Combine all that with their pay and the Knight's table is never empty.

It's hard to resent Kendall for it, though. He is generous. He is kind. Every new skill he picks up, he passes on to James. He shares his lunch at school. He drags James on all his solo expeditions, from crabbing to spear fishing. He knows how to dodge Peacekeepers and the whipping post instinctively. Kendall treats poaching from the Capitol like it's a game, like danger can't touch him. It's hard not to believe him when they're lying sprawled together in the sand, laughing, nets flush with fish.

"You're right. We could let mom do the cooking," Kendall agrees, nose wrinkling. "Anyway, I was thinking about swimming out to the reef for real food. You coming?"

"What about Katie? Wait." James glances around. "If you're supposed to be watching her, where is she?"

"Out front, trying to convince your dad to give you the rest of the day off." Kendall replies easily.

"She's six."

"So? She's smarter than us." Kendall says, all open affection. James sometimes thinks becoming a big brother was the proudest moment of his life. "You didn't answer the question, Diamond."

"Sure, if dad says I can go."

"He will," Kendall replies, algae-bloom eyes shining, convinced of his own majesty. It makes James's heart skip a beat.

Or maybe that's the way the crow's nest pitches dangerously to the left.

"I want to get off this thing," Kendall informs him immediately, his face paling. James snorts. It's nice to know that Kendall isn't completely fearless.

"Alright."

Kendall's hair catches the sunlight as James sets his blowtorch aside, ready to follow him down. He is gold, gold and green, his features cut like the statues of mermen that they keep in town square. He skitters down onto the ladder, awkward, long limbs, and James catches the scent of brine that clings to his skin. James breathes deep. He really loves that smell.

He really loves this impish, impulsive boy, too.

"Hey, Kendall?"

Kendall pauses, balanced carefully on the metal rungs that lead down to the bow of this incomplete ship. "Yeah?"

James leans across the rivets he's just finished installing, one hand on the rail. The kiss is barely more than a brush of their lips, soft and sweet and perfect.

It still makes Kendall's grip slip. One second he is there, staring at James in open mouthed awe, and the next he is plummeting straight down to the deck. He ends up with a broken arm and bruised ribs and a smile that takes months to dissipate.

That is how James always remembers their first kiss.


	4. Lionheart

**Stardust**

_IV: Lionheart_

* * *

Kendall dives so deep the pressure makes his skull throb. An eel wends in and out of a coral jungle to his left, where he cut his foot only minutes before. It sniffs at the blood he left, occluding the water like squid ink.

Stupid coral. Something so pretty shouldn't be so damn sharp.

He clears his nose, his ears, rinsing the fog from his grimy goggles. _There_. Poking out of a mound below a soft bodied jungle of anemones. Kendall digs his fingertips into the dirt, catching the rough, gray shell. This makes exactly twenty oysters; more than enough for a picnic.

His lungs burn for oxygen, the water pressing in around him, weighing heavy on his chest. He pushes up off the soft sand of the shelf, his ascent slow. Diving is always dangerous work, properly equipped or not, and District Four's only decompression chamber broke down a long time ago. Kendall swims up through halos of yellow light, school of fish fluttering around his calves. He breaks into day, gulping down fresh, cool air.

A dark spot in the distance catches his eye. James slices through the water like a shark.

"Find anything?" Kendall yells.

James holds up a fist full of green, and even from afar Kendall can tell his expression is rueful. He jerks his head, signaling the swim back to shore. It's a little less than a mile from here, so close to the drop off into open water. They've nearly gone too far. If a Peacekeeper patrol ship had found them, they'd be whipped, or worse.

Kendall's stomach rumbles. He thinks, _it would have been worth it_.

They clamber out of the waves, on up to the shelter of the dunes. There they lay, panting. Kendall asks, "Kelp, really?"

He cannot keep the fondness from his voice. James jokes, "It reminded me of you. Your head is full of the stuff."

Kendall makes a face. "Can we eat already?"

He's hungry, _so_ hungry. His mom is weathered, rusted through like the hull of her ship, and lately it has been falling on Kendall to forage for food. He doesn't _mind_. District Four is more bountiful than the pathetic places they see on TV every year, but poaching is beyond illegal. Which Kendall gets, kind of. Overfishing is such a big problem. Just. He never realized how hard his parents worked to keep him fed until his dad disappeared into the sea.

They are fortunate now that most of the Peacekeepers are deployed past the continental shelf, watching, always watching, to see if anyone will try to make a break for it. They catch a small boat, occasionally. The large trawlers and the research vessels and the people who operate them have clearance to sail on out towards the horizon. Clearance and GPS trackers. Kendall always stares at the nub of his mother's, protruding from her blue veins, and wonders why she doesn't try to cut it out.

"Let's," James decides, rubbing his hand over his stomach. His ribs are no longer visible, hidden beneath a healthy layer of muscle. His family eats often these days. Poaching may be illegal, but it also easy. And James is lethal in the water.

Well. Usually. Tomorrow's a Reaping Day. James is allowed to be a little off.

They crack the oysters and eat them raw, sliding slippery down their throats. The kelp they leave to dry, letting it crack with sea salt before shoving it in their mouths. As sunset overtakes the sky, Kendall raps shells against each other, the pearlescent red, blue, and indigo insides flashing as he makes up a melody.

"You're good at that," James says, humming along.

"I'm good at everything," Kendall snarks back. It's not strictly true, but James doesn't argue.

They've been best friends since they were six years old, since that very first swimming lesson with Camille. Sure, they hit some rough patches in between; James went to class the next day and took to boating like he was born to do it. Kendall's dad wouldn't shut about him, which inspired more than a little jealousy on Kendall's part. But he's long since gotten over that. He's watched James grow from a scrawny shipyard rat into a strong, broad shouldered man-boy, into this shining young god who makes all the girls swoon.

Kendall's pretty enamored himself. He has no idea how it happened. Somewhere between running down the beach, blowing on conch shells, bickering, and more midnight swims that Kendall can count, James crept up on him. Like a wave.

Like a storm.

Like love.

Kendall doesn't know if that's what this is. Just the idea of it makes him feel small and unprepared and like he's falling from somewhere high up, their first kiss all over again. Every time he thinks about the L-word too seriously, James chases away the lines on his face with the bow of his lips. He always sends Kendall's head spinning.

He does it now, pushing his mouth insistent against Kendall's over their tiny camp fire, soft. "Worried about tomorrow?"

"No." Kendall says, and he isn't. His name's been in the lottery all of three times, and his baby sister, Katie, is only eight. She's not eligible for anything yet. "M'happy."

He moves his lips against James's, salty and familiar. James deepens the lazy kiss, rolling on top of him, hitching their hips together. He sends frantic electricity spiraling out through Kendall's limbs. "Me too."

It's too easy for things to get out of control, for James's fingers to play against the waistline of Kendall's trunks, pressing hard into Kendall's thigh. Passion comes so easy to James, who thinks with his heart and his dick instead of his head.

Kendall feels it too, can't think of anything he'd like more than to see James naked and desperate and panting only for him. But. He's not ready yet. Kendall exhales, shaky. "Slow down."

James whines, trying to get more friction between them, arching into Kendall in this sinful sweet way. "Don't wanna. Want you."

Kendall almost caves. Almost, but not quite. "Not yet. Not today. We've got all the time in the world."

James groans into the skin of Kendall's throat, squirms in a way that means he's still hot beneath his skin. He says, "Promise?"

"Promise," Kendall says, pulling James close to his chest. They lay there for a long time, turned on but not doing anything else about it, listening to the thunder of the waves and their own heartbeats. Night brings whale song lullabies, haunting in their beauty. James hums along, his voice reverberating through Kendall's ribcage. Without meaning to, he falls asleep, curled into James's warmth.

* * *

Kendall wakes up the next morning alone. He expects to see James at the Reaping, but on the way there, he bumps into James's parents, standing at the back of the crowd. "Uh, hi, Mrs. Diamond. Where's James?"

"Deathly ill," she explains. "Something about a bad oyster?"

Kendall blanches. Shit. "Is he okay?"

"He'll be fine, but he couldn't make it today. The Peacekeepers tried to give us a hard time about it until he puked in one of their faces." Kendall huffs a laugh without meaning to. She allows a smile. "It was rather spectacular."

Kendall bids her goodbye, unhurried, not worried. He waves to Camille across the square, and then another friend from school. He thinks that he owes James an apology for the oysters, but mostly he envies that he gets to stay home. That's rarely allowed. Kendall wishes he'd seen that poor Peacekeeper's expression.

The day smells of low tide, dead fish and decay. The first Tribute culled is a girl Kendall vaguely recognizes from school – he still does not pay much attention there- named Kat. She stalks up on stage brave, self-assured. She is already a winner. Or maybe not. Because the second name that rings out over the loudspeakers is one that Kendall did not expect to hear.

_His_.

Kendall thinks about whale song.

Kendall thinks about waiting.

Kendall thinks about James.

After he steps up on stage, their District chaperone asks for volunteers. He is met with silence, and Kendall is not surprised. Kat is the most courageous of her friends, and the only person who would take Kendall's place is tucked safe in bed, fever hot and doubled over in pain. He sends his thanks to the sea for that, grateful for bad oysters and dried kelp.

The one thing he regrets is that he will not get to say goodbye.

Which is why Kendall decides, then and there, that he will win. He may not be one of those kids whose parents have trained him for this for his entire life, but he also will not go meekly to his death. He is bigger, stronger, and better fed than most Tributes. He's been spear fishing in the rivers that feed into the ocean for almost as long as he's been swimming. And if there's water, he knows how to stay fed. Deep sea trawling is the most dangerous job in all of Panem, which makes Kendall the most dangerous boy in the Games. He is a _Career_, in every sense of the word.

He's still petrified. Kendall does not know how to kill.

He supposes he will learn.

Just like he promised, he and James will have all the time in the world.


	5. Give Me Mouth To Mouth

**Stardust**

_V: Give Me Mouth To Mouth_

A/N: You guys are awesome. :) I'm glad you're enjoying this. _  
_

* * *

The arena is the color of blood. It drips in his eyes and cakes beneath his nails. He can taste it in his mouth. Kendall smiles through it, teeth stained red, because that is what keeps him alive. _Sociopathic charm_.

He steps over Kat's body and that of the girl who killed her, and the boy who killed her and so on and so forth. Feasts are so messy. No one has any manners. Look, right there, the last boy in the line is eviscerated. Kendall's fault. Oops. He keeps that pretty grin pasted on for the cameras, because they are everywhere, too.

The arena sparkles like flashbulbs and blood.

Kendall's dizzy, exhausted, but he cannot sleep. There's one Tribute left somewhere, clever thing. Kendall rubs the heels of his hands against his eyelids. Bad idea.

Purple lips.

Milky irises.

Jagged gashes and redcrimsonscarletcherryrubyr ed. Before he did not know there were so many different shades of death.

His hands drop to his side. He rubs salve across the wound there, the festering mess cooling immediately. Nothing he can do for the parts that have already gone necrotic. There is an infection spreading inside him and it takes everything he has to keep walking, to keep hunting.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," he mutters to the lost Tribute. Nine, he thinks. It is a boy from District Nine. Or was it Three? He's having trouble keeping track.

The thing is that killing is easy.

Too easy. The first time, it felt like nothing. Kat laughed. He laughed. They all laughed. Like the little kids they are.

Were.

It was only later, with the fall of night, that Kendall let himself experience the full horror of what he'd done. It rose up like bile in his throat, but puking on camera is a major no-no. That's what his mentor said. Kendall swallowed down his own vomit and smiled, smiled like the vicious, brutal murderer he's supposed to be.

It was simple to be brave back on the platform at home, with Kat beaming at his side and all of District Four cheering for them. His mother and Katie did not cry at their goodbye visit, certain of his impending victory. James hadn't been there to tell him to stop acting like a cocky bitch, so he never did. Kendall waltzed through training with his fear buried beneath the construct of arrogance that his mentor told him was necessary, shielded by the assumption that survival was worth something. He had a promise to keep, a family to support and a best friend to get back to.

Now he doesn't know. Is living worth the things he's done?

It has to be.

Every time he's on the brink of losing it, he whistles; a melody that sounds like whale song and James. He didn't know it was possible to miss somebody this much. He had this image that he held in his mind's eye for so long, the gold-red-brown of James's hair backlit by the orange sky, slick wet and black as he bobbed in the waves. He held the dying sun in his leonine eyes, and he held Kendall fast in his arms, anchoring him to the Earth. There, in the currents, James kissed him hotwetneedy and all Kendall ever wanted.

Now when Kendall thinks of James's voice all he hears are death rattles. When he tries to pictures his face, all he sees are shadows and flames and blood.

The pain in his side screamsyellsshouts for attention, splinters his organs apart despite the salve that will not be salvation.

Kendall murdered the boy who gave him this wound, snapped his neck with a crack that sounded like a Peacekeeper's gun. He can still feel it in his hands, the flood of power and then the break. He can smell the part after, too; they never talk about that on TV. The kid's District partner came after him with a mace that caught him in the head, sent stars exploding in his brain. Kendall gutted her clean. Somehow he came away with a clump of hair tangled in his fingers, yanked free at the root.

She looked a lot like Katie.

His hands tighten on the trident his sponsors sent, sparkling silver in the watery sunlight. A _trident_. It's so fucking pretentious. What is he, a Greek god? He stumbles, pitches forward to his knees, and gets up again. He is not a god, and he is no longer a boy.

He is a machine.

He is numb.

He is nothing.

Even if James is waiting for Kendall to come home, Kendall doesn't exist anymore. And when he thinks about that, it grates, burns deep, makes him hate James more than he can stand. His only reason to fight is not a reason at all.

The wind rustles the trees. A foot hits a twig wrong. Kendall slings his net over his shoulder and falls to a crouch, trident ready. Dried blood flakes from his eyebrow. It tastes like copper in his mouth. He's almost done, almost home, doesn't want to be home. He stabs at the boy with the dying sun in his eyes, silver prongs sinking into intestine easy as butterfish.

James's mouth falls open, his sooty eyelashes wet with salt spray and engine grease and shockshockshock, "_Kendall_-"

Kendall bolts upright out of bed, damp with sweat, fingers searching out a weapon that is not there. He does not yell, will not yell, will not even breathe, but his chest still heaves, heart racing too fast.

It hurts. That's good. He needs it to hurt.

Less than five feet away, the skin of James's collar bone glimmers like scales in the moonlight. He peers up at Kendall with sleepy eyes. He is tired. He is drained. He is alive. Kendall chokes back a sob.

"Are you okay?" James asks, voice rough. Kendall nods, uncertain that he'll ever be okay again. James sighs. "Liar. C'mere."

Kendall climbs obediently back into bed, throws himself over James like maybe his skin will absorb every last trace of him.

He thought he was over the nightmares. Sleeping next to James for the past year has helped more than he'll ever be able to admit out loud. But he's fresh off his first time as a mentor, and the skinny tributes he tried to guide through the Sixty Sixth Hunger Games barely made it past the Cornucopia before they were torn down. Between that and the recaps of his own Games, all of Kendall's bad dreams have come flooding back with a vengeance. He is remembering everything he's tried so hard to forget.

James kisses the sheen of sweat on his brow and murmurs, "You're here. You're safe. You're home."

Kendall catches his lips a little desperately, sucks on his mouth and his tongue. He is not safe, but James doesn't understand. He can't. And that's okay, he doesn't ever want James to understand, to know blood or horror or the way that Kendall only ever feels real now when he's like this, kissing him filthy and obscene.

James takes over. He trail-blazes his way from Kendall's mouth to his jaw and then down, down, down. He licks out at Kendall's navel and traces over to his side, to the place where Kendall was sliced up and sewn back together again, even though he doesn't have any scars to show for it. He is wholehealednew.

Never mind that he feels broken, sick, and old. The Capitol is all about appearances.

James nuzzles his face against Kendall's invisible wounds, grazes his teeth against the skin of his hipbone. Kendall arches up against James's mouth and begs, "More."

"Kendall," James gasps, peeking up at him with hooded eyes. He looks so young. "Are you sure?"

Kendall isn't sure about anything anymore. That's the point. He runs his hands through James's hair and tries not to remember curls caught against his skin, pulled free from a dead girl's scalp. "Yeah."

He lets James inch his sleep shorts down around his knees, and then all the way off. They have to be quiet, because big as Kendall's house in the Victor's village is, the walls are very thin. But it is very, very hard to be quiet. Awed, James hooks Kendall on his fingers, spreads him raw. He licks him slippery and loose and it feels nothing like Kendall imagined. Even the pleasure aches.

When he's ready, when it's so good that Kendall thinks he will die if they keep going, James rocks back on his heels and asks again, "Are you sure?"

He is scared, uncertain, and Kendall gets that. Kendall wanted their first time to be romantic. He'd held onto this idea of the beach and the stars and love that would be a high, clear note that built between them. Now he wishes he'd let James fuck him before, when his idea of a bad day involved an empty stomach and a fight with his mom. Kendall doesn't remember what it's like to have a kiss that is not bittersweet. Every single touch of James's lips feels like drowning. "Just do it."

James does. Kendall shatters around him, the pulse of his skin and his whimper of, "Fuck. Fuck, dude. _Fuck_."

The big, yellow moon casts shadows on his cheekbones, jagged daggers. He cuts into Kendall with eyes, but he is gentle with his body. James rocks into him like the waves on a clear day, too close, too intimate. He is watching Kendall like he is a gift, like what they're doing means everything to him.

It means everything to Kendall, too, and that just makes it worse. He doesn't deserve this.

His nerve endings are on fire. His heart pounds. All he can breathe is James. "Harder."

"I'll hurt you," James objects, hair matted to his forehead.

Kendall twines their fingers together. He kisses James's knuckles and then wraps them loose around his throat. "So hurt me."

James's expression is inscrutable. Maybe he's realizing how messed up this is. His thumb strokes over Kendall's jugular, the pale of his skin a stark contrast to James's tan, weathered hands. He squeezes, experimentally, and Kendall moans. He's been home for over a year, and he was beginning to forget what it felt like, being so close to his own end.

James's eyes flutter shut, and for a second Kendall thinks that he is sleeping, or worse, he is dead. Dead but still buried inside of him, molten hot and nono_no_-

James exhales.

He flips Kendall on his stomach and takes him that way, one hand on his neck while his lips plant kisses between Kendall's shoulder blades. James traces words there with his tongue, but Kendall doesn't even try to translate them. There is heat like a sunburn beneath his skin that only cools when James goes deep. "James, James, _please_."

James pivots his hips so that Kendall can feel the warm head of him mimic the movement. Every thrust jolts up through his stomach, through his spine. Kendall cries out, the sound punched from his lungs, wrecked.

"Shh, Kendall, you've gotta- _fuck_, be quiet or you'll wake up Katie and your mom."

Kendall doesn't want to be quiet. There is nothing to be found in silence but the wretchedness of his own nightmares. He says so, out loud. He rasps, "Let me hear you."

James falters. He tells him, "Whatever you want."

After that, James is fierce, ragged grunts and the ruthless pump of his hips. He is an iron band around Kendall's throat, pitiless, crushing. He coaxes noises from Kendall that Kendall never knew he could make, and echoes them in turn. When they break, it hits them both hard, and for Kendall, it isn't anything like satisfying.

James's forehead rests against his shoulder, and all Kendall can think is that it was supposed to be different. Sweet. Perfect. He'd wanted to make it about James, about the special whatever-it-is that they share, and instead he turned it into a sadistic celebration of the pain that lives and rots inside his bones. He says, "I'm sorry," and then he extricates himself from James, from the bed, from his house. He runs and runs and runs with ghosts on his heels.

Kendall reaches the edge of the beach, the wharf and civilization close by just beginning to wake up, but he does not stop. He swims outoutout, swims and thinks that winning was supposed to be the end. So why, exactly, is there no end in sight?

He puffs out all of his breath and sinks straight to the bottom of the ocean like a rock. Bubbles billow around his face, rising to the early morning light, where Kendall no longer belongs. He digs his fingers into the sediment, red-brown, redredred that he can't get rid of. And then he opens his mouth and screams.

And screams.

And screams. He doesn't stop until strong arms wrap around his middle and a hand turns his jaw, fingers stroking against his cheek. _James_.

He crushes their lips together. He swallows all of Kendall's silent screams in a flurry of bubbles and tenderness. Kendall fights him off, shoves him away. He kicks back towards the surface, lungs turned to fire. James is right on his heels. But why? Why find him in the middle of the ocean? Why chase away Kendall's nightmares? Didn't he watch the Games? Didn't he _see_?

Because Kendall has. They keep playing recaps on TV, and there he is, the triumphant Victor with his shiny trident and his bloody smile. He is dashing and handsome.

He is a fucking monster.

The second James's head emerges from the crest of a wave, Kendall shouts "Why won't you just leave me alone?"

"Because that's not what you need," James replies easily, droplets of water clinging to his eyelashes like- no. Not like blood. There is no blood here.

"How do you know?"

"Don't be an idiot. Don't push me away. Not after that."

"I'm not an idiot," Kendall rages. "You have no idea what I went through-"

"You're right, I don't. I have no fucking idea," James explodes. "I just watched and waited and waited and do you even know how scared I was?" He paddles in close, draws his arms around Kendall's shoulders and kisses him. He says, "I can't lose you."

Kendall bites James's lip. He draws blood.

James rears back, eyes wide. But he does not shove Kendall away. "You think if you act damaged enough, I'm going to leave?"

"I killed people," Kendall bites out, because James doesn't seem to get it.

"And? You want me to punish you for what you did?" James yells over the surf. "Is that really what you want?"

He pushes Kendall beneath the surface of the waves, hands like a vise on his collarbone. Kendall doesn't get a chance to catch his breath. He kicks up, struggles, breaks free for two seconds before James is forcing him down again, and again, before Kendall manages to heave him off. He puts distance between them, a few feet. Kendall growls, "You need to leave before I try to fight back."

James's chest is heaving, his eyes bright, and he says, "That's not happening. I thought you weren't coming home. I thought- and I was so scared and you finally came back, but you're not- _you_."

Kendall tries to breathe, ragged, salt burning in his lungs. "I know."

"But it's not your fault, Kendall. Do you know that?"

Kendall refuses to reply. That's stupid. Of course it's his fault.

James shakes his head, "I don't _care_ what you did. I don't care what you _do_. I'm not giving up on you. I'll be whatever you want. I'll hurt you if that's what I have to do, Kendall. Just _stop_. Stop trying to shove me away."

James has blood on his lips, but he knocks their heads together, his big hand warm on the back of Kendall's neck. His breath tastes like metal. When he presses in close, mouth warm, it is copper and sweet.

The waves hold them close, pushing their bodies together like they belong. Kendall asks, "Why don't you hate me?"

James doesn't even have to think about it. "Because I love you." He kisses Kendall again, and this time Kendall is okay when it is soft and sweet and light.

The sun takes over the sky, and in James's eyes it is no longer dying. It is alivealivealive, like James is alive and Kendall is alive, no matter what he's done.

He wonders if this is what healing feels like.


	6. Evil Don't Look Like Anything

**Stardust**

_VI: Evil Don't Look Like Anything_

A/N: I sort of forgot to post this here. Whoops.

* * *

Sixty Six and the logo is corpse blue, bloated and ugly like the floaters that wash up on shore after a big storm, lips pastry-glazed with sand, hair laced through with seaweed bows. Every time it flashes on screen James thinks of dead men, spongy skin and fish nibbled cheeks, all dressed up for a tea party with mermaids. He reaches for Kendall's hand, but Kendall is a drowned boy, fresh born from storm tossed waves, empty space in his wake. He stands on stage next to purple-blue and two skinny, terrified kids with white-blond hair, the color of thrush. They are rocks tied to his feet, dragging him down, down, down, until he is sitting on the bottom of the sea with old bones and compost and sludge-black sediment, digging his fingers for purchase where there is none, not at all, not even a little bit. The Capitol doesn't leave hand holds, just volcanic ash and femur chips and the occasional galleon winking by, currents creating an alluvial fan from strands of gold-blond-saffron as Kendall watches everything slip away.

His mouth spins whirlpools, bubbles and viscosity but no actual noise- _smile pretty for the cameras, Victor_- and he looks up at the boy-men and girl-women who came before him, who are stiff and rigid as mastheads, wooden whorl cheeks and empty splinter smiles, yes, yes, smile for violence and blood and the sharks sure to follow.

James bites his own mouth honey-amber-red, cuts his nails into his couch and ignores his mom when she tells him that tall ships won't build themselves, because can't she see, doesn't she know? James cannot pull himself away, not from this, mackerel skies and mare's tails, all his hatches battened down, but Kendall is still a riptide stronger than anything he knows.

His image on screen is shaky, unreachable, a ripple in a veil of water. He is a mentor for the first time in his life, but he is not very good at it.

The kids die.

"Everyone dies," Kendall says dismissively, once he's back home. "Eventually."

"Stop trying to be brave all the time and let me help you," James begs, unheard, unheard, always talking to deaf ears. He'd get more of a response from a conch shell, the distant call of the sea better than words, or a lack thereof.

Kendall just grins, skeletal, wan. "I'm okay."

_Okay_ has been redefined over the past year and a half. Screams line the curve of the _o_, connotations of fear lurk in the abstract form of the _k_, nightmares bundle inside the gaping maw of the _a_, and a question mark lies in the _y_; will this ever end?

Will it?

Will it really?

"Okay," James replies softly, pulling Kendall into his chest, and he ignores how Kendall goes spiny as a sea urchin in his arms.

That night James dreams of puffy cheeks, distended abdomens, empty eye sockets, and that damned logo, moonlit-lagoon blue, the color of decay and death and sorrow. When he wakes up to a high pitched note of panic, he worries it might have fallen from his own lips.

James touches his mouth, the pink-red give cemetery silent. Ragged breath across the room tips him off. He is not the perpetrator, not tonight, and he does not know what it is to be haunted.

(In District Four, they put dead bodies out to sea in burning boats so that their souls can never return to shore.)

Kendall yells and sobs and chokes on his own shame, all on the inside, but James can still see it pooling there in his luminescent eyes, pupils black as still water, irises thin silver rings. James beckons him down off the ledge, the same way he's been doing night after endless night, tugged from the dark abyss of his dreamscape by terror that is so sharp and poignant James can taste it on Kendall's skin when they kiss. He allows Kendall to climb over his body, thighs on either side of James's hips, lips needy, starved (and oh, the things James knows about hunger).

Kendall kisses him sloppy and gropes low, and James doesn't know what to do with his hands because Kendall is traumatized, broken, really, really fucked up, but Kendall is also beautiful and hot and doing that thing with his tongue. He drives James insane the same way he's been doing since whatever this is started, since back before James even knew what to do with his own dick, and it's worse now that he's got an idea, all kinds of ideas. He's spent the last year and a half trying to be patient, saying no when he wants to say yes, fervently not taking advantage of his poor, wretched Victor of a best friend, but what is he supposed to do with this? Kendall has hands and a mouth and too much skin, and James is just not this strong. He is teenage hormones and love, way too much love, and being patient is really hard when the other party won't get with the program.

He arches up into Kendall's heat, helpless, because this is the boy that starred in his very first wet dream, and at least ninety two percent of the ones since then.

(The outlying eight percent isn't even worth mentioning, because they did not involve Kendall, and Kendall is everything.)

Waves roar in his ears, drowning out every ounce of his common sense. He stutters out, "Are you sure," because James isn't sure, not even a little bit.

"Yeah," Kendall's eyes glitter like oil slicks, like James painted his fingertips across the pupils and left all the dirt and grime and the rainbow shine of his career path right there on Kendall's skin.

"Are you sure?" James asks again.

"Just do it." Kendall heaves a breath, and James can't argue anymore.

In bed, James curses- _Fuck. Fuck, dude._ _Fuck_- and Kendall talks to the ghosts of people James has never met. He is noisy just to counteract their screams and the way they echo in the chambers of his own mind.

James cannot hear any screams, but he listens to his staccato heartbeat in his ears, like he is underwater, and for him there is nothing alive tonight but his racing blood and Kendall. Kendall, who begs for forgiveness, for mercy, for absolution, but none of those things are James's to give.

Kendall wriggles in James's hands, squirms like a caught fish, and his eyelids are blue-black in the darkness. He is beautiful, breathtaking, perfect. James holds steady as an anchor, his hand fasted with Kendall's like a promise.

It's everything he's ever wanted.

Kendall takes the life James breathes into him, swallowing it down and then greedily asking for more (more, more, it's never actually enough, "_James_," he gasps he pants he pleads).

"Harder."

"I'll hurt you," James forces out, because yes, harder, good, that sounds good, but Kendall is contorted beneath him and he needs to be very kind. He needs to be the gentleman, he needs-

Kendall wraps James's fingers around his own throat, his pulse strong, real, there. "So hurt me."

He is wild, he is fierce, and the sky is blown out in the face of his gaze (his hands, his knees, his thighs tight at James's hips). James has to turn him on his stomach just to get away from it, from the intensity and the shame and the bite of guilt in his bones. He will not say no, even if it is a thing that he should do, a kiss to the neck and the spine and right between Kendall's shoulder blades, a touch of lips to skin and the hope that it's enough.

James thinks and hopes and prays, okay, okay, evening red and morning gray.

* * *

Sixty Seven and Kendall's just turned sixteen. James resents being younger, so close to his own sixteenth birthday that he can taste it in the air, adulthood sitting pretty on his tongue. He already feels like a grownup who has fucked and fought and watched good people die, but he's got nothing on Kendall, second year a mentor, second year enslaved.

Kendall doesn't take it so hard this time; he has summer in his eyes, fragmented green like the sun-dappled ponds they would jump in as kids. He's got his brave face on, his warrior smirk and too much skin on display, a lion trying so hard not to be a lamb. Every time he smiles they flashback to his games, to Sixty Five when he wore red like camouflage, tasted it on his tongue and let it pool in the crevices of his hands. People school around him during these, brightly colored clown fish congratulating Kendall on the past that they know nothing about. James has spent the whole of a year extracting the Capitol's claws from Kendall's psyche, plucking porcupine needles and bee stingers and cactus pines free and clear, and he will keep on, again and again, the next year, and the next.

Even knowing that, he watches with gritted teeth, but what can he do? On the inside, he is split logs, an inferno, burning and burning like a beach bonfire, but on the outside he is just a boy in a sea shanty, with salt thick on his skin and iron in his bones. Paralyzed, hands tied. He cannot fight the Capitol crowd, grinning barracuda grins, watching Kendall like they want to lick the blood from his teeth.

(Everyone in District Four looks at James, and Kendall says they can't help it, but now everyone in the whole wide nation is looking at Kendall too. Looking and wanting and coveting, and James cannot swallow past the lump in his throat.)

Kendall comes home on a day when the winds wrestle and fight, sunshine a halo at his back. They head out to the beach and fuck in the sand, hard and fast and rough and messy, exactly how Kendall likes it.

James makes sure that he likes it, because for as long as James can remember, Kendall has been his and he has been Kendall's, the two of them fitted tighter together than the opposing sides of an oyster shell, a pearl of something- maybe love- clutched between them. He does not plan on ever letting that change, cannot allow it, tries to prove it with his hands and his tongue and his dick.

He says, "I don't want you to go back."

And Kendall says, "I have to."

"Why?" He is whining, and he is not at all ashamed.

Kendall kicks back against the sand and tells him, "You can't find deliverance in love alone."

Deliverance, pah. What does James know about that? His hands are grimy, black beneath the nails, too used to makingcraftingbuilding.

He honestly has no idea what it is like to destroy.

James squeezes grains of sand that sparkle white hot in the sunlight before slipping through his fingertips. He asks, "When did you get so cryptic?", and that is the part he hates most about this, that somehow the little boy who was his best friend is turning into a man that he doesn't know at all. Their hearts used to beat their own secret language, and now Kendall's plain English is hard for him to wrap his head around.

Kendall shrugs. James tries, "You really believe that?"

"I believe that the world's a dangerous place. I can help, James. I can. I _am_."

James cannot disagree. He does not understand danger, not like he should, not like Kendall does, but he thinks it looks something like a whipping post (splintered from overuse, rotted through from too much salt air), or maybe it is shiny hard and colorful (like a harpoon gun and blood floating inky in the ocean, spun thin as water paints), or maybe danger exactly resembles a dead Tribute (slack across the blood-soaked ground in the forefront of the golden, shining cornucopia). He cannot disagree, but he can tell Kendall, fiercely, "You're mine. You belong to me."

Kendall grins wide and crooked. He nuzzles James's neck, lips raising the hair on his skin as he asks, "Who else would I belong to?"

James does not have an answer to that, but Kendall pouts his lips like a porpoise, butting his head up against James's armpit. He mutters, "Let's go again," and so they do, lying beneath bright blue, puffy clouds.

Life would be better if they could latch onto one and float away.

* * *

Sixty Eight and Kendall is a figurine, broken glass and polish scrubbed thin. From afar, between the static lines of James's old TV set, he wears his porcelain smile. James strains to touch it, but all his fingers find is the vast expanse of antique glass and the long cold rod of the television antenna, silvered like a weapon in his hands. He huddles in the dune hills of his couch and waits for lightning to strike so that he too can be a china doll boy.

James thought of volunteering this year, but Kendall told him no, never, _absolutely not_, and James listened. He thinks it's for the best. He does not know how to deal with porcelain; James is iron, he is steel, he is rivets and nuts and bolts. He wears engine grease instead of Capitol patented berry rouge, and the only finery he owns are pearls plucked straight from the mouths of oysters, seedy and sad. He only wants to be in the Capitol, to be close to Kendall, to fix his fragmented, fake delight and paint real love on his lips.

That is not how it works out.

Kendall gets home, and his smile shatters. It rakes over James's insides, sharp as shark's teeth. Up close, even the jut of his cheekbones makes James bleed.

He stands naked in the middle of his bedroom, wearing the green tinged fingerprints of another man on his skin. There is a hickey blossoming across Kendall's collarbone and there are scratch marks etched deep into his back.

(He is dirty, filthy, used.)

He catches James looking at the bruises on his hipbones and says, "We don't have to talk about this."

James's mouth tastes like bile and blood. He is hemorrhaging inside, he cannot breathe. Even his strong, metal heart cannot take this knife wound. "_Kendall_."

"I did it for us, okay? For Katie, and mom. For _you_." Kendall's voice trembles, shakes, broken shards of glass in his throat. But for the first time in his life, James does not care.

"How can you even say this is for _me_?"

Kendall flinches, eyes sparking fire. He insists, "You don't know what's happening. I have to protect you all or, _or_- god, James. I can't lose any of you."

It's hard to take him seriously with the imprint of hands around his throat. Kendall looks worse than when he returned from the Games, because the Capitol was there to sew him up and put him back together again. Now he is bruises, cuts, and scratches, and James wants to ask if he's finally getting it rough enough.

He bites his tongue, tastes blood, bites harder.

This terrible, horrible thought occurs to him, and he blurts it out before he can analyze it because no, no, _no_, Kendall wouldn't take this from him. "Did _you_ fuck anyone?"

"I-" Kendall pauses, guilty. His eyes are China-glazed, empty. He says, "I give as good as I get."

"That's not what I mean and you know it." James grabs for Kendall's dick, holds its familiar weight in his hand and doesn't understand how Kendall can possibly be getting half hard from this. "I know you got fucked. Did. You. Fuck. Anyone?" He repeats, angry and terrified, because Kendall has never fucked James.

James has begged and pleaded and wanted for so long, has been waiting to feel Kendall inside of him. Every time he asked, Kendall would say _no_, that he didn't want to hurt James, that it wasn't the right time yet. He had a million reasons.

"There were women, James, I had to. And some of the guys like-"

A million.

Or maybe only one, one reason, one secret.

James cuts him off, blood boiling. His voice is quiet, but also full of things he doesn't know how to name, like the crushing pressure at the bottom of the sea. "Am I that repulsive?"

Kendall's eyes widen. "What?"

"You didn't think I could handle it the way you wanted? Hard?" He shoves Kendall back. "Fast? So you just gave it away like, like- fuck, you are a _whore_."

Kendall's face shutters closed, and James never understood that expression before, never got that a person can actually close up shop, hide away all the parts of themselves that have been open and vulnerable until now. He thought he knew what Kendall looked like wounded, but this is brand spanking new, a mask covering a mask, like nothing James has ever seen.

He almost takes vindictive pleasure in it.

Almost.

Soft, timid, Kendall says, "That's not-"

James does not wait to hear what it's _not_. He puts his fist through the Knights' wall and walks the hell away.

"Nonono, _stop_," Kendall trips over his own feet to get dressed, to chase James out onto the walkway leading away from Victor's Village, straight to the beach. "James, please. James!"

The plaintive note thrills down James's spine, settles in his gut and plagues him until he chokes out, "_Why_?"

"I told you, I have to protect you."

"Protect me from what?"

Kendall's quiet, waves rolling in to lick his knees before darting away, afraid he might lash out.

James nods to himself. He says, "Don't go back to the Capitol."

"I have to go back. There's more going on here than you can see."

"Then tell me. Fuck, Kendall. Stop treating me like a little kid and tell me what the hell is happening."

"It's better if you don't know."

Sure. Fine. Great.

Silence creates canyons, abysses and trenches that separate the two of them in a way they've never experienced before, and when Kendall asks, "Are you jealous?" James refuses to dignify it with an answer, refuses to admit to the hurricane force winds whipping through his ribcage or the accompanying shrapnel that has already lodged in his heart.

Quietly, Kendall says, "You don't have to be. You _shouldn't _be."

"I shouldn't? So you won't care if I go fuck someone else? I could, I so could, it would be easy for me to fuck other people too," James tells him, even though the idea of anyone but Kendall makes him feel ill.

Kendall's gaze sharpens. His voice cracks, and his response is immediate, raw emotion tearing at his esophagus. "No. Don't do that. Don't ever-"

"Then why is it okay for you?"

"It's not okay for me. It's not. But I didn't have a fucking choice."

"There's always a choice."

"No. Not when the alternative is watching everyone I love _disappear_," he makes air quotes around the word, says it the same way he would _die_. Kendall sucks in through his nose, oxygen permeating his lungs, forcing his shoulders to slump. He admits, "Letting something happen to you isn't a choice at all."

"It is," James retorts, because Kendall will not get mercy or forgiveness or absolution from him. "You were just too scared to make it."

Kendall recoils like James has physically punched him, and James can't even begin to feel bad for it. He's always needed Kendall way more than Kendall has ever needed him, and the person who needs the most loses, right?

He should have seen this coming.

"Fuck, James, I think of you, when I'm with them. Always," Kendall swears.

James doesn't know if that makes it better or worse. Kendall is still James's, except he's not anymore. The Hunger Games reduced him to ashes, and the boy who is rising from them, charcoal gray, is twisted inside.

"Stop lying."

"I'm not lying. I love you. I've always fucking loved you," Kendall yells, loud across the beach and the sand and the surf, amplified somehow when it reverberates through James's chest.

It's the first time either of them have ever said it out loud. His steps falter, skidding to a halt on too-soft sand, and Kendall takes advantage, tries to kiss him.

James shoves him away. "What are you doing?"

"I think it's pretty self-explanatory," Kendall replies, rolling his eyes. They've gone dark green, deep water pierced by sunlight, so heartbreakingly beautiful that James almost cannot bring himself to say the words. But he does, he manages, blurts out on a breath:

"I don't want you to touch me anymore."

* * *

Halfway to Sixty Nine and there is a squall kicking up a ruckus up and down the coastline, but James does not care. Brutal sun and skyrocketing temperatures don't matter either. Come heat, come hurricanes, bring cyclones and monsoons. No natural disaster, hell or high water, will be able to match the way that wind whistles through James's chest, through the big empty space that is white capped waves and nothingness.

Days stretch, painful, long. Salt water scrapes his skin raw. The sun turns his skin brown, brown, and browner still. Camille asks, "Are you going to forgive him, ever?"

Bitter, the mercury taste of undercooked fish, James spits, "He doesn't deserve forgiveness."

Camille has sea-lion eyes, warm, intelligent, and much too gentle. She says, "No. But, you deserve to be happy. And you're not. Without Kendall, you're not happy, James."

"I know," and of course he does. He is not as much of an iron-boy as his parents might've wished, not sturdy or strong or stalwart. He craves the warmth of Kendall's hands against his spine, the fishing hook curve of his smile and the familiar comfort of his voice. Every day he goes without, James's bones oxidize. For the better part of the summer and fall, his internal organs have rusted through, heart smoking like the ruins of District Thirteen, and he wants to make Kendall hurt. He wants to mark him, inside and out, but he cannot.

It's been six months since they've even spoken.

Some mornings, James will see him boarding his mother's trawler, shadows pressed like fingerprints beneath his sunken eyes.

"He can't sleep," Katie says when she spots James reconnoitering, the tone of her voice disapproving.

"Neither can I," James replies, ruffling her hair.

His mother recognizes the signs, knows more than James has ever deigned to tell her. She suggests, "Maybe it's time you find a nice girl," but James doesn't want anyone else. Despite himself, Kendall has infected James, from his heart to his lungs to his muscles to his bloodstream. His love spiders out, an entire second nervous system that screams and screams and screams Kendall's name. There is no part of James that he has not infiltrated, and James sees that changing just right of _never_.

In mid-winter, the Peacekeepers end up harpooning a man off the prow of Kendall's mom's ship, claiming he was trying to instigate something, to run. James listens to Camille detail the account, eyes bright with a kind of fascinated bloodlust that sends terror blaring off in James's stomach. Before Kendall there was only Camille, with her thick dark hair and the fierce way she bared her teeth at anyone who dared to pick on either of them. Berry stained lips and a halfcocked smile, she was a force of nature, a tiny natural disaster with mischief and leftover fruit in the corner of her mouth, and she was also James's best friend. He figured they'd get married someday, in that abstract way that little boys always think they'll marry their best friends, and when he got older and figured out that Camille was not the princess bride he was searching for, there weren't any hard feelings at all.

If anything, it brought them closer, and that is why he is scared. Camille has been training to be a Career since basically forever, and more than once James has done the gamut with her; sprinting along the beach, breaststrokes in the sea, sparring with knives and learning to how to become an extension of a weapon. In the abstract it was fun, but nothing has been fun since Sixty Five and watching Kendall lose his soul, and James doesn't want her to throw herself head first into danger.

(He can picture her doing it anyway, entire universes spinning off the sequins of some lovely dress, the reflection of light dizzying against the dark walls.)

He tells her, "That's awful."

Camille smirks and says, "Not for you. Kendall saw it all."

James knows what she's getting at, and he's still mad, so mad that his vision reddens when he even considers it, but he heads over to the Knights' anyway. He stands in the doorway and builds a monument to indecision, should he or shouldn't he, should he or- he knocks.

"Are you alright?" James asks guardedly when the door swings back, and Kendall stares at him, still and sorrowful, like a whale with weary, kelp-colored eyes.

He crosses his arms defensively and replies, "Does it matter if I am?"

James wants to shake him, to rattle his brain around until he gets that that is exactly the point of all of this, because Kendall matters so damn much, is a hundred thousand million times better than the life he's handpicked. Instead he drops his gaze and keeps a sarcastic comment from spilling out all over Mrs. Knight's handmade welcome mat.

Carefully, he swallows and says, "I was just checking."

Kendall stares him down, and there is a tragedy to be found here. Everyone wants Kendall Knight's heart, everyone, except the person it belongs to.

(James thinks if he really had Kendall's heart he would cup it in his palms and squeeze. Turnabout is fair play, and that wouldn't even be close to what Kendall's done to him, the way he's bitten into James's ventricles, shiny apply red, sharp teeth against muscle, swallowing pieces of him until he owned him, completely.)

James walks away, turns tail and runs.

He knows that he'll cave soon. He can't hold a grudge against Kendall for this long because it hurts being away from him, hurts so bad that it's like trying to breathe underwater.

(This is what real love affairs are about, a lack of oxygen and pain that never really ends.)

Sure, Kendall said he had reasons, and James suspects they might even be good ones. But he does not know how to forgive without leveling the playing field.

Dak Zevon is a welder, a kid who works for James's dad when they can afford to pay him, which isn't often. James seeks him out, soaking wet, fresh from the beach. He's done everything he can to look like sunshine and sea salt and sex, and he's apparently succeeded. All James has to do is bat his eyes once, twice, before Dak is holding fire to his skin. He bends James over a scrap of heap metal and it's over almost as quick as it's begun, but that's the point. It's over.

Giving up feels exactly like revenge, but so what?

Now James and Kendall are fucking even.

* * *

Sixty Nine, and James loses himself in the smooth metal of the blowtorch under his fingers and the heavy, hot weight of the sun on his neck, turning him golden where he feels pale and sickly.

He refuses to watch the Games alone anymore. He can't take the silence or the way its ghostly hands are spider-web clingy, tickling over the ridges of his spine and the shell of his ears. When foul weather- seagull, seagull, sit in the sand, it's never good when you're on land- finally forces him inside, he hides out in the safety of Camille's home, surrounded by the familiar faces of her family as the drama unfolds.

On screen it pours. The arena turns to mud that sucks Tributes down and will not let them go, a jilted lover with earthen hands. James cannot hear the sound of the TV over the noise of the monsoon pounding down on Camille's tin roof, but he can clearly see the look on Kendall's face when Four's Tributes both go down in a tangle of limbs and blood that turns the mud to red clay.

James tries not to care.

He still has to force bile down during the mentors' side show, the commentary section where Kendall is so foreign he's extraterrestrial, and they call him a whore and they call him a god, and sometimes James will catch someone using endearments like _sweetcheeks_ or _honeypie_ or worst of all, _lover_, emphasized by a gentle touch to his face. Kendall always leans into it, always, and it's hard for James to tell if the motion is practiced or if he genuinely enjoys it when strangers put their hands all over him.

Kendall is a star, but he is also dying, burning brilliant white hot from the pearly sheen of his teeth to the soles of his feet to the soft inside of his knees, where paying clients lick him smooth, weathered as a pebble on the shore.

(A girl with dark hair and a vicious smile comes out triumphant in the Games, and James wonders if she'll get Kendall as a victory prize.)

Half a month later, and Kendall is home, at his door, asking, begging, "Don't ignore me anymore, please, god, look, you just-"

"Kendall, you can't-"

"-you're James. You're big and strong and beautiful, the most beautiful thing in this whole damn world, and I need you to be safe."

"Kendall-"

"Safe, James, just be _safe_."

They don't use firearms in the games- too easy, over too fast- but everyone in Panem knows what it's like to be on the wrong end of a Peacekeeper's rifle. That's what the first touch of Kendall's lips is, when he throws himself at James; the cold barrel of a gun, awe and fear building to a fever pitch beneath James's ribs. It's over before it begins, and Kendall pulls back and glances around, furtively searching palm fronds and smooth sea glass chimes for spying eyes or something while James tries and fails to remember how to breathe.

Kendall is a disease, hiding dormant in his nervous system, and all it takes is a single blow to the head to shake him back loose again, back into James's bloodstream like he never even left. He whispers, "If the Capitol wants to own me, let them. I don't care about anything but keeping you far, far away from them all. Please. _Please_."

Kendall said love is not deliverance, but it is the closest thing that James knows.

One more year, he thinks. One more Reaping, skip forward a few months, and James will be nineteen. Ineligible.

Maybe then Kendall will quit.

* * *

A few weeks before Seventy and everyone knows what Kendall Knight is.

At school James digs crescent shaped welts into the palms of his hands- _at least my boyfriend isn't turning tricks in the Capitol_, a classmate says, laughing like it's even close to funny- the shape of his knees –_what's it like to fuck a whore_?-, bruises his own thighs from gripping so tight, but he does not let his smile crack. He grins and bears it because he has faith. Inexplicable, inexorable, ingrained so deeply in his being that he can't shake it off.

He believes in Kendall, or he is trying.

James asks questions, like _what was the first time like_ and _do you enjoy it_ and _does it mean anything_?

"Scary, it's not awful, and no," Kendall says, "Sex doesn't mean anything."

"Well then why don't we stop having it?" James retorts, and he regrets it for the next few weeks when his balls turn bluer than deep ocean. When the strike finally ends, he scrapes his teeth over the skin of Kendall's neck, over fading red made by someone else while Kendall keens and wants and asks for more, more, more, always fucking more.

(James wants to wreck the pale expanse of his skin, but he can't, he won't, it's not supposed to be like this. Love is gentle, love is kind, love is not a brutal storm that tears palm trees from the shore and leaves bodies bleeding out in the sand.)

Later, Kendall reminds him quietly, "I think of you."

"Always?"

In their new, fragile beast of a relationship, they do not lie. "No. Not always."

His heart is a savage thing, vines creeping through the spaces in his ribs, overgrown, thorny and terrible.

James has not figured out if he likes the truth very much.

* * *

Seventy, and James is on the wrong side of the TV.

He is tall and broad and capable. Kendall says he has a target on his back, eyes clouded with worry, but James has never been hunted. He doesn't know what it's like, until he does, and

There is

Light

A name

A voice

A song

Fingers stroking his hair, hum hum humming…

"James," the light says, sings, screams, and James holds Kendall's head underwater, blond hair spreading a halo, except no- it's not Kendall at all, because Kendall isn't here. He is watching James on a big, flat screen, beneath a logo that is green like algae,

The edge of a bruise,

Necrotic flesh, and

Kendall's eyes.

James sucks in a breath, brackish water splashing in his lungs, and shoves the girl in his hands away. She is limp, already gone- for how long now?- and he can barely keep his head aloft. He grew up in an element, a friend a mother a nurturer, and now it is the enemy. It sucks him down, wraps icy fingers around his ankles and holds him, holds him, it will never let him go.

(Puffy cheeks, distended abdomens, empty eye sockets, and that damned logo, moonlit-lagoon blue, the color of decay and death and sorrow.)

But no.

The logo this year, Seventy One, is supposed to be jaundice yellow, and James survived. He is free. He slogs out of his dreams, his _memories_, reaching for the one person who is supposed to scare all the bad things away.

There is no one, and there has not been for as many nights as James can count.

All those evenings he spent soothing away his best friend's nightmares have been wasted, because Kendall has not been there to do so in return. This is the truth, the truth James has learned, the truth James definitely, absolutely, unequivocally hates:

Seventy and everything has changed, but Kendall has not.


End file.
